Jobs and homes among pledges in Labour manifesto

Ben O’Connell

Northumberland Labour has launched its manifesto for May’s elections, with pledges to create thousands of homes and thousands of jobs.

The group, which currently forms the administration at County Hall, promises 1,500 affordable homes added to the county’s housing stock, 10,000 jobs created or safeguarded through initiatives like Energy Central, which stretches from Lynemouth to Blyth, and to continue to roll out planned investment of more than £380million across Northumberland.

The plan includes new leisure centres for Berwick, Ponteland, Blyth and Morpeth, and new school projects like James Calvert Spence College in Amble as well as at Ponteland and Seaton Delaval.

Labour’s vision would also see council jobs and services spread across the county market towns as they move these from centralised County Hall as part of the Market Towns Initiative and would see the council concentrate on infrastructure projects, like the Ashington-Blyth-Tyne line.

Grant Davey, leader of the Council and the Labour group, said: “Our plans for Northumberland are fully costed and are balanced. We want to build 1,500 more affordable houses across the whole county, we want to invest to safeguard and create more than 10,000 Northumberland jobs and we will offer a cast-iron ‘no privatisation’ guarantee.

“Our plans are about helping people across the whole county while Tory plans seem to want to penalise more than half of the county residents who live in the south-east.

“Our plan is a plan to Invest in Northumberland compared with a Tory fantasy plan to divide and bankrupt the county penalising over 50 per cent of the population in south-east Northumberland with their pledge to halt investment.”